A must-read piece in the last issue of Forbes by MIT's Sherry Turkleabout the alienating consequences of the digital revolution. As she argues in "Can You Hear Me Now?", the consequence of connectivity is alienation:

Thanks to technology, people have never been more connected--or more alienated

It's a deliciously disturbing irony which could have been invented by a Viennese metaphysician. The more connected we become, the more locked in our personal digital universe we end up. Rather than empowering us, technology is enslaving us to the message. Saint McLuhan's message was that the media was message. Instead, the message has become the master.

Once upon a time, free spirits believed that the independent man was the man without qualities. Today, The independent man is the man without a message. Banish your BlackBerry, ruin your Razr, turn-off your Treo. Subvert connectivity. Breath deeply. And smile.

Remixing the message of a deliciously disturbing Viennese metaphysician, Turkle describes our technological dystopia as "virtuality and its discontents". She's right. Now we need our own metaphysicians to loudly message the anti-message.